Tourism competitiveness of Italian municipalities

The purpose of the paper is the study of tourism competitiveness and its determinants for the almost 8000 Italian municipalities. The partial least squares method is used on secondary data. Competitiveness is a latent factor measured by a number of reflective indicators, and influenced by some latent determinants derived within a formative scheme. The main findings show the importance of competitive advantages as key drivers of tourism competitiveness. Local specialized areas in tourism are identified through the destination competitiveness scores. The work contributes to the study of local competitiveness, also giving evidence on how it is possible to cover the complex feature of tourism competitiveness with secondary data. Moreover, as the municipality is generally the basic territorial unit for identifying specialized local areas, future research can apply these results in drawing a map of Italy with sounder areas for tourism analysis. Main limitations are concerned with the imputation of missing values, as data on tourist flows of smaller municipalities are not released for confidentiality issues. Moreover, the analysis at local level limits the use of some indicators, which are recognized as important determinants of competitiveness (prices of tourist services, transportation costs).

Read The Article